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August 7, 2017

August #InkRipples: Author options in Publishing

A quick side note before I get into this month’s topic of
author options in publishing. Several lovely bloggers helped my alter ego, LA
Dragoni, celebrate the release of Guardian’s Touch with a blog tour and
giveaway. Be sure to stop by their blogs TODAY to read my words of wisdom and
enter to win one of three great prizes. Today, Monday, is the last day.

I’m going to try and take a different approach to this
month’s Ink Ripples topic and see if I can address how the expanded options for
authors in publishing has impacted the reader. At least from my viewpoint.

Back in the day, not all that long ago, authors really only
had one option to achieve successful sales in publishing. The big six (there used
to be six, now there are…five?) Anyway, since Amazon paved the way to making
self-publishing not only affordable and attainable and others like Smashwords,
and Draft to Digital, etc, followed, it also opened the gates to achieve sales
success, all sorts of possibilities have opened up, including many small press publishers, and as a result more books
are published each month than ever before.

What does this mean to readers?

Selection. Just doing a generic search on Amazon for
a few genres I come up with more books than a reader could browse in a lifetime,
let alone read. Paranormal Romance: 122,765. Science Fiction & Fantasy:
382,555. Oh, here. I might have stumbled upon a niche market. Young Adult
Contemporary only pulls a result of 43,446. Ooo – wait, even better is Time
Travel Romance, which only returns 13,130.

I have books published/to be published in each of these
categories. Let’s say a reader is interested in my Super Villain Academy books,
but can’t remember the name of any of the books – or they heard someone talking
about my time travel romance and can’t remember it’s title or the pen name I write under. How are they
supposed to find it?! Sure there is a lot of selection, but how do readers
narrow it down? Eenie meanie, miney, moe? Throw darts at the screen and see
what they hit? Selection can be good and it can be overwhelming.

Price. Competition often drives prices down. Maybe
not so good for the authors, who would like to get paid for all the work they
poured into that book, but it’s great for the readers. 99¢ is the new black and
readers are taking full advantage of it. It isn’t even too disappointing if
they end up with a poorly written book or a one that wasn’t edited at that
price. And it is a good way to see if you want to invest a whole $3.99 on one
of the author’s other books. However, because authors aren't making money, they are more likely to stop publishing altogether, which will impact that author's fan directly.

Services. This is actually a pretty sweet deal for
readers. There are now a ton of FREE newsletters readers can join where,
when the reader signs up, they tell the newsletter what types of books they are
most interested in and they get a daily/weekly email with a list of books in
those categories. That helps the reader find new authors or even publishers who
they can then stick with. The reader can weed out the newsletters that don’t
send suggestions they are interested in and only continue to receive the ones
they deem more reliable. Bloggers are also AWESOME. If readers take the
time to try a few different bloggers who review books they are interested in,
they’ll find one or two they can rely on to feel the same about a book as they
do.

Quality. Back in the day it used to be that only quality
books were found through publishers and self-published work was generally crap.
The waters have been so stirred up now that you will find self-published crap,
small press published crap and crap from the big five. But guess what – it also
means you can find quality work across the board too.

The interesting thing is
most of the time the reader isn’t really aware of how the book got into their
hands. They just know that the cover or the blurb or a recommendation from a
friend/bookseller/librarian caught their attention. Most readers don’t say,
“Ah, but who published it?” before deciding to pick it up.

What do you think? How has the expansion of authors’
options in publishing changed life for the bookworms out there?

#Inkripplesis a themed meme hosted byMary Waibel,Katie L. Carroll, andKai Strand posting on the first Monday of every month. To participate compose your
own post regarding the theme of the month, and link back to the three host
blogs. Feel free to post whenever you want during the month, but be sure to
include #inkripples when you promote so readers can find you. The idea is that
we toss a word or idea into the inkwell and each post is a new ripple. There is
no wrong interpretation. Themes and images and more information can be found here.

5 comments:

Kai, I like that you took the POV of the reader. Indeed there are more options out there, but what concerns me as a reader is that there is less quality control. Furthermore, as readers we get so many choices that I often feel overwhelmed. Actually I do look at who published a book because I have less confidence in self-published works. They tend to be poorly edited. So, while there are more choices, I sometimes wish there was better quality control. Otherwise, readers are buying at their own risk. Fortunately, as you pointed out, we are not spending much on our mistakes.

I absolutely could be wrong that readers don't look at the publishers, I came to that conclusion after watching several poorly written books (both self and traditionally published) soar up the charts. As well as some very successful self-pubbed that were well done. Thanks for stopping in!

With all the different options today, it is easier to get a story published or publish it yourself. Saying this, to me, means I need to do the best I can to make sure my work is equal to books published by the big 5. This means write, revise, revise, get edited, critiqued and everything I can do to make my book the best it can be.

The different options today is exciting. Yeah, it has it downsides, but what thing doesn't? We all are trying to make through this crazy thing called life, so expect bumps. I'm just grateful I have a way to try to reach readers and to find new and interesting books myself.

Here's the Scoop on

Hi! I'm Kai (pronounced like the letter K.) I write Epic award winning fiction for kids and teens. I can say that because I won an award from EPIC for The Weaver! I'm the mother of four, which makes me a bit of an expert in the writing for kids arena. I love singing, gardening, walking, pizza and Mozart. Please check out my books and short stories on my website and contact me with any questions you have. Thanks for reading.